Justin Taylor's Blog, page 113

The Road Less Traveled: The Faithfulness of J.I. Packer vs. the Capitulation of World Vision

John Piper weighs in on the remarkable capitulation—surely a sign of things to come—as World Vision now regards homosexual practice within a state-sanctioned union as acceptable behavior for Christians and a secondary issue like baptism and speaking in tongues.

When J. I. Packer walked out of the 2002 synod of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster, he was protesting it decision to “bless same-sex unions.” His rationale is relevant for the developments at World Vision.

First, his words about unity expose the crass alignment of homosexual intercourse and baptism as comparable markers for biblical faithfulness.  Packer wrote, “It is most misleading, indeed crass, to call this disagreement simply a difference about interpretation, of the kind for which Anglican comprehensiveness has always sought to make room.”

When World Vision says “We cannot jump into the fight on one side or another on this issue,” here is the side they do in fact jump onto: We forbid fornication and adultery as acceptable lifestyles among our employees (which they do), but we will not forbid the regular practice of homosexual intercourse. To presume that this position is not “jumping into the fight on one side or the other” is fanciful.

But worse than fancy, removing homosexual intercourse from its Biblical alignment with fornication and adultery (and greed and theft and drunkenness) trivializes its correlation with perdition.

This was at the heart of why J. I. Packer walked. Referring to all these sins, Packer said, “They are ways of sin that, if not repented of and forsaken, will keep people out of God’s kingdom of salvation.”

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

In other words, to treat regular homosexual intercourse as less dangerous than fornication, adultery, greed, theft, and drunkenness is to treat perdition as if it were a small thing, or not really coming. The same text that imperils active fornicators and adulterers and thieves and coveters, also imperils those who practice homosexuality.

Make no mistake, this so-called “neutral” position of World Vision is a position to regard practicing homosexuals (under the guise of an imaginary “marriage”) as following an acceptable Christian lifestyle, on the analogy of choosing infant baptism over believers’ baptism.

Over against this, the apostle Paul says they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. It is that serious. If it were not, God would not have given his Son to be crucified for our rescue. Therefore, World Vision, has trivialized perdition and cross.

Piper goes on to argue that though they do not directly intend it, World Vision is making shipwreck of their legacy of compassion for the poor. To find out why he says this, you can read the whole thing here.

Sooner rather than later every Christian leader will need to go on record as to whether or not he believes the painful truth of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and the glorious possibility of 1 Corinthians 6:11. And those who follow such leaders—working for them, financially supporting them, read their books and listening to their podcasts—have a right to know now where their pastor or leader stands.

I do not think it takes a prophet to see where many of our well-intentioned but pragmatically  atheological leaders will land in the days ahead.

The Hole in World Vision’s Gospel

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Richard Stearns, president of World Vision and the author of “The Hole in Our Gospel”

Russell Moore, president of the ERLC, reacts to the stunning announcement that the Christian relief agency World Vision USA will hire professing Christians who engage in homosexual behavior as long as they are in a legally sanctioned same-sex “marriage,” even though World Vision does not see this as a “compromise” and thinks they are remaining morally neutral on this issue:

At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and as the church has held for 2000 years is true, then refusing a call to repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.

The devil works in two ways: by deception (“You shall not surely die” Gen. 3) and by accusation (“the accuser of the brethren” Rev 12).

For some people, the devil wishes to assure that there’s no need for repentance, for others that there’s no hope for mercy.

Some people are deceived into thinking they are too good for the gospel while others are accused into thinking they’re too bad for the gospel.

The gospel of Jesus Christ tears down both strategies.

The gospel clearly calls us to repentance, even when that repentance is hated by the outside world.

And the gospel clearly calls us to mercy by faith in the blood of Christ, even when we can’t believe that we’d ever be received.

We empower darkness when we refuse to warn of judgment.

We empower the darkness when we refuse to offer forgiveness through the blood of the cross.

We’re entering an era where we will see who the evangelicals really are, and by that I mean those who believe in the gospel itself, in all of its truth and all of its grace. And many will shrink back. There are no riots if the gospel you’re preaching doesn’t threaten the silversmiths of the Temple of Artemis. And there are no clucking tongues if the gospel you’re preaching isn’t offered to tax collectors and temple prostitutes.

Donor bases come and go. But the gospel of Jesus Christ stands forever.

World Vision is a good thing to have, unless the world is all you can see.

You can read the whole thing here.

Was God Really in the Tomb as a Corpse?

David Murray recently offered provocative blog post asking, “Was Jesus Still God in the Tomb?”

He opens it in this way:

Was Jesus God in the womb? Was Jesus God in the tomb? You probably answered yes to the first question, but hesitated to do so over the second, didn’t you? Although it’s brain-bursting to think of God as an embryo, it’s brain-numbing to think of God as a corpse.

You can read the whole thing here as David sets forth his reflections on this.

It seems to me, however, that the piece could use some tightening and nuancing as we experience iron sharpening iron over this crucial—but at times confusing—issue of Christology. The point is not criticism as an end in itself but a means of growing together in our knowledge of Christ and his work and how to best express these glorious truths.

Toward that end I enlisted the assistance of Stephen Wellum, professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and that author of a forthcoming Christology in Crossway’s Foundations of Evangelical Theology series (which I expect to become a standard work). His reflections on David’s piece are as follows:

Reflecting on the incarnation and how God the Son adds to himself a human nature, and making sense of the metaphysics of the incarnation, is not an easy task. Great minds have reflected on these truths, and in the end our doing so is the glorious task of faith seeking understanding. We must carefully remain within the biblical givens and the theological reflections of the church, especially as reflected in the Church’s confession as represented by the Chalcedonian Definition. Even though Confessions are secondary standards they helps set the parameters by which we carry out our theologizing of such important truths. Dr. David Murray is to be commended for helping us once again reflect upon and wrestle with the incredible and glorious truth of the incarnation, and anything said in response and disagreement must not be taken as not appreciating what he has sought to write in this post. However, in light of Scripture and the Chalcedon Confession, I find a number of points confusing and it is to these points I now turn.

1. The Language of God in the Incarnation

Dr. Murray’s use of language regarding the incarnation, though legitimate in most places, needs more precision in order to avoid misunderstanding.

For example, he asks: “Was Jesus God in the womb? Was Jesus God in the tomb?” (my emphasis).

Later he says, “Although it’s brain-bursting to think of God as an embryo, it’s brain-numbing to think of God as a corpse” (my emphasis).

In another place he says, as we think of Jesus in the womb we struggle with such truths and think to ourselves, “God cannot become a microscopic collection of cells.”

My problem with how Dr. Murray has made these statements is that they are misleading if there are not some careful distinctions made. Even though Scripture can talk in a similar way to Dr. Murray—e.g., Acts 20:28  affirms that God bought the church with his own blood, referring to the blood of Christ—one must be careful in the use of God without qualification. Let me explain further. When we use the word God we mostly think of God in his entire being. Thus when we read Dr. Murray write, “God is a corpse,” it is easy to think that he is saying that somehow in the death of Christ, God in his entire being has died, which I don’t think he is saying. In order to be more precise in (1) how we speak of the incarnation, (2) how we use the word God, and then (3) how we apply this language to Christ’s death, it is better to say that God the Son was in the womb, God the Son died—not God without qualification. In the incarnation it is God the Son who becomes incarnate (not the Father and Spirit) and in the death of Christ, it is God the Son who dies (not God without qualification). Once again, I have no doubt that Dr. Murray would agree with this, yet in his provocative language, he opens the door to a lot of unnecessary misunderstanding.

2. The Language of Hypostatic Union

Another example of confusion in Dr. Murray’s language is how he talks about the hypostatic union.

Classical Christology, grounded in such a statement as John 1:14, makes it clear that it is the Word or the person of the Son who adds to himself a human nature which consists of a body and soul. As a result, the Son, not the divine nature of the Son, subsists now in two natures: (1) his divine nature which he shares with the Father and Spirit, and (2) his human nature, which is his own.

In a couple of places, I read Dr. Murray as saying that the human nature of Christ was united to his divine nature, yet later on he says the opposite, which is confusing. For example, he says, “His [Jesus'] human soul still united to His divine nature” (my emphasis) or in another place, “While His [Jesus'] human soul was separated from His body, His divine nature was separated from neither and never will be. His divine nature was as united to His lifeless body on earth as it was to His glorified soul in heaven.” It is on this basis that he says that as we go into the tomb and see Jesus’ body in the grave, we are to say “God is a corpse” and “That dead body was still God and therefore deserving of our worship.”

However, this way of stating the hypostatic union is incorrect. The divine nature of the Son did not add to himself or unite himself to a human nature; instead it was the person of the Son who forever subsists in the divine nature and who now adds to himself a human nature. In this latter understanding, which is the confession of the Church, how we view Christ’s body in the tomb will be slightly different than Dr. Murray suggests, but before I turn to that point, I do want to note that later in his blog, he rightly quotes the Westminster Confession which correctly notes that Christ’s two distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person. What this tells me is that Dr. Murray’s statement of the incarnation and particularly the hypostatic union needs more clarification and precision.

3. The Pre-Glorified Body of Christ

We now come to the issue of how we are to think of Christ’s body in the tomb prior to his glorious resurrection. Do we say that as we gaze on Christ’s lifeless body that “God was a corpse” or “God was in the tomb” or that we should bow down and worship the dead body of Christ?

Obviously these are not easy issues, but I would not state it just as Dr. Murray has stated it. Instead, I would say the following. On the cross, God the Son incarnate died. How do I say such a thing? On the basis of the communicatio idiomatum: whatever is true of the natures may be predicated of the person and since it is the person, not the natures, which lives and acts, it is legitimate to say that on the cross God the Son died. But what exactly does this entail metaphysically speaking? I do not think it entails that the person of the Son or the divine nature dies in the sense that the Son does not continue to act, live, and rule. What it does mean is that the Son experiences death in and through his human nature so that the person of the Son experiences a separation of his human body and soul. As a result, Christ’s human body is now temporarily separated from him and put in the grave, while he, as the person of the Son, continues to subsist in his human soul and his divine nature. If we think about our death, assuming a duality to our nature, when we die we as persons continue to exist in and through our souls, but our human bodies are placed in the grave and there is an abnormal separation in our human nature of body from soul. In a similar way, in and through his human nature, this is what God the Son experiences. During this time, God the Son is still fully human because he continues to subsist in his human soul, yet he experiences for this intermediate period a separation in his human nature as he awaits the full union of his body and soul at the resurrection.

Is it legitimate then to say that when we enter the tomb, “God is a corpse” or “God is in the tomb”? I would not state it this way. What I would say is that the human body of God the Son is in the tomb even though he, as the Son, continues to live, rule, and sustain the universe. One has to be careful, as noted above, not to give the impression that somehow God is dead (when he is not) nor even that God the Son is now a corpse (which he is not). What is dead is the human body of Christ which has been temporarily separated from his human soul and which in less than three days will be reunited so that our Lord Jesus Christ, in his glorified human nature, will be seen.

Conclusion

No doubt these issues are difficult and ultimately they should lead us to worship and adoration. However, one must be careful how we speak of such glorious realities. I appreciate Dr. Murray’s reflections on the incarnation and Easter, but I disagree with how he has stated it and some of the confusions inherent in his discussion.

May we all be led to a greater appreciation and love of our great Savior, who not only took on our humanity but also in love and obedience to his Father’s will, and in love for us, experienced the horror of death in and through his humanity, in order to become our glorious all-sufficient Savior and the great high priest of the new covenant.

If You Watch One Video Today, Make It This One

And let the nations be glad!

15% Off the New Reformed Library at Logos

Logos is launching their new Reformed software packages, which contains a lot of good resources. You could use the coupon code BETWEENTWO5 at checkout to save 15%.

Here are some highlights:

Commentaries

Calvin’s Commentaries (46 vols.)
Crossway Classic Commentaries (26 vols.)
Preaching the Word Series, edited by Kent Hughes (30 vols.)

Church History

Philip Schaff’s Early Church Fathers (37 vols.)
History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (5 vols.)
History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (8 vols.)

Theology

Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 vols.)
Tracts and Treatises of John Calvin (8 vols.)
The Works of John Owen (24 vols.) (Includes Owen’s 8 vol. commentary on Hebrews)
The Works of Charles Hodge (29 vos.)
B. B. Warfield Collection (20 vols.)
Select Works of Geerhardus Vos (14 vols.)
The only English translation of Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics (5 vols.) (only available in Logos)
Louis Berkhof Collection (15 vols.)
Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (4 vols.)
Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (4 vols.)

A Conversation with Trillia Newbell on “United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity”

All of us need to learn and listen from wise writers like Trillia Newbell. Here she sits down with Thabiti and Kristi Anyabwile at the Front Porch to talk about her new book, United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity (Moody, 2014):

A Conversation with Derek Thomas

Jonathan Master, dean of the School of Divinity and director of the Center for University Studies at Cairn University, sat down in May 2013 with pastor-theologian Derek Thomas, Senior Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia.

They talk about Derek’s life, conversion, and perspective on gospel ministry.

Mohler Lecture: “God’s Lion in London: Charles Spurgeon and the Challenge of the Modern Age”

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, delivered the second annual Spurgeon Lecture at the Nicole Institute for Baptist Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando (March 10, 2014), setting Spurgeon within his intellectual and cultural context:

How Can I Be Set Free from Pornography?

David Platt:

HT: Z

See also Heath Lambert’s Finally Free: Fighting for Purity with the Power of Grace (Zondervan, 2013).

The Silence of Christ Our Substitute and the Misuse of Our Tongue

James 3 warns us about the misuse of our tongue. James begins in v. 1 by saying that not many of us should be teachers, because we will be judged with greater strictness. His first illustration of our common “stumbling” (v. 2) is our “small member,” the tongue (v. 5). Like a small flame that can lead to a great forest first (v. 5), so the tongue can set ablaze the whole of our life (v. 6). It is untameable, restless, and full of deadly poison (vv. 7-8). The same tongue can bless God and cure those in the image of God (vv. 9-10). As James says, “My brothers, these things out not to be so” (v. 10).

How do we apply the misuse of our tongue to the redeeming power of the gospel?

Sinclair Ferguson points us to the work—and then the example—of Christ our silent savior substitute:

He was silent because of every word that has proceeded from your lips; because of every word that provides adequate reason for God to damn you for all eternity, because you have cursed him or his image.

The Lord Jesus came into the world to bear the judgment of God against the sin of our tongues. When he stood before the High Priest and the judgment seat of Pontius Pilate, he accepted a sentence of guilt.

But that was my guilt. He bore in his body on the tree the sins of my lips and my tongue.

Do you wish you could control your tongue better? Do you want to follow the example of Jesus? Then you need to understand that he is Savior first, and then he is Example. You need to come, conscious of the sin of your lips, and say:

God be merciful to me a sinner.

I thank you that Jesus came and was silent

in order that he might bear the penalty of all my misuse of my tongue.

And when you know that he has taken God’s judgment and wrath against your every sinful word, you cannot but come to him and say:

O, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.

He is able to answer that prayer, and its companion petition:

Be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power.

All the guilt can be cleansed away! Christ can deliver you from the misuse of the tongue. And when you come to him conscious of that sin, you discover what a glorious Savior he is. Delivered—albeit not yet perfected and glorified—your tongue now shows forth his praises. Taken out of the pit and from the miry clay on your lips is now a new song of praise to your God. Then people not only hear a different vocabulary, but they hear you speak with a different accent. That is what leaves the lasting impression of the power of Christ and the transformation of grace in your life.

Ferguson recounts that as a native of Scotland ministering in the United States, he is often asked where he is from—his accent indicates he is from another land.

That is surely a parable of what it is possible for the people of God to become in the way we use our tongues, as by God’s grace we learn to speak with a Jesus-like accent.

At the end of the day, it may not be so much what people say to you when you are in a room that is the really telling thing about your speech as a Christian. Rather it may be the questions people ask when you leave the room. “Where does he come from?” “Do you know where she belongs?”

Do you speak like someone who “sounds” a little like Jesus because, born broken in your consciousness of your sinful tongue, you have found pardon and renewal in Christ, and now his Word dwells richly in you?

—Sinclair B. Ferguson, “The Bit, the Bridle, and the Blessing,” in The Power of Words and the Wonder of God, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 65-66.